Events

Digital Festival 2016 takes place at The Egg in Brussels on 21 June 2016. This festival of ideas provides an opportunity to challenge and better understand the impact and potential of digital technologies.

As part of the festival, the EDPS has organised a workshop entitled Data Protection by Design: Privacy as an engineering principle. As people become increasingly aware of the threat of mass surveillance, the demand for more privacy friendly technologies is increasing. In the EU, data protection by design and by default will soon become a legal obligation, under the new data protection rules to be applied by May 2018. The workshop will address the different approaches to privacy engineering, the current challenges faced and initiatives, such as the Internet Privacy Engineering Network (IPEN), which aim to overcome these challenges.

The workshop takes place from 2.45pm-4pm and will be moderated by EDPS IT specialist Achim Klabunde. Confirmed speakers include Aurelie Pols, Estelle Masse, Jetzabel Serna and Aristotelis Tzafalias. To attend, please register online for the Digital Festival.

For the second year, the EDPS met with civil society organisations to discuss the state of data protection and privacy in the EU. On the agenda this year was the implementation of the GDPR and the directive on data protection rules for the police and criminal justice, the review of the ePrivacy Directive, and developments in case law in the last 12 months, notably Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner and the proposed Privacy Shield agreement. 

The meeting took place at the EDPS premises in Brussels from 9.30am-12.30pm. If you have any questions, please write to us at edps@edps.europa.eu with '2016 EDPS- Civil Society Summit' in the subject line, and we will send you further details about the event. The videos of the event are available here: video 1, video 2.

Follow #EDPSCivSoc2016 and stay tuned!

Your personal information is collected, shared, used and stored by individuals, organisations and public authorities every day. Recruitment activities, video surveillance and health data collection are just a few examples of this. It is the job of the EDPS to ensure that the European institutions and bodies respect your data protection rights when they process your personal data.

The EDPS stand will be at the European Parliament as part of the EU institutions' Europe Day celebrations.

Located on the first floor of the ASP building, next to meeting room 3G, EDPS staff will be on hand to answer questions about your privacy rights and how to protect your personal information. Free goodies and information will be on offer, as well as fun and interactive activities for both children and adults to enjoy. You will also have a chance to win one of 20 USB sticks, simply by taking part in our fun, simple quiz!

Whether shopping online, using a smartphone or applying for jobs, data protection affects us all, so be sure to visit us at our stand to find out more!

For more information visit the Europe Day 2016 website.

For a number of years, the DPOs in the EU institutions and bodies have met at regular intervals to share common experiences and discuss horizontal issues. These meetings which take place twice a year have been a regular fixture in the EDPS calendar since 2004 since they are a valuable opportunity to listen to DPOs sharing experiences from their respective institutions with one another and with their supervisory authority - us. These meetings are also an opportunity for the EDPS to present our policies and activities to DPOs. The upcoming DPO meeting at Eurofound in Dublin on 28 April 2016 will include discussions on the EDPS' e-communications guidelines, staff appraisal, whistleblowing and cloud computing.

For more information please consult the agenda.

On 7-8 April 2016, the Academy of European Law (ERA) will be organising in Brussels its Annual Conference on European Data Protection Law with the support and participation of the EDPS.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about to be passed, it is time to assess the concrete innovations it will introduce and to focus on how to implement it in practice. The conference aims at providing legal practitioners and data protection specialists with the necessary guidance to prepare for GDPR implementation and to realise its full potential. The conference will also include an update on the EU-US Privacy Shield.

For more information and to register, please click here.